Tonight I had the joy of listening to Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Alice Pung read from their work: Chris from his varied books of poetry; Alice from her autobiographical work, Unpolished Gem, and from a short story she'd written about a family holiday.
They didn't have powerpoints. Without the pondering heaviness of academic learning, though ladened with sharp wit and intelligence, the night was for the Spoken Word. Two voices, two vocabularies. The presence of two very different writers, and yet what held them together was a joinery of honesty, of reality, humourous presented. Mundane realities - saucers; white goods; mobile phones; a part-time job at Retra Vision; the daily task of making up a bed.
Neither writers romanticised reality, tho' perhaps by virtue of the act of description, or the lyric of poetry, one elevates the mundane. At any rate I came away with a sense of seeing (rubbing my eyes clear), and a deeper appreciation for truth telling.
The disarming nature of honesty! I had not, until now, seen honesty as an exacting but fair friend, who welcomes you to sit and speak. A friend once told me that she makes a policy of "honouring honesty" in her life, and has found that honesty repays her, and honours her in return.
I have often seen honesty as a cruel taskmaster. One that reveals the horror, the ugliness within. A master who forces me opened upon a surgeon's table, at worst for the gawking masses, to bear witness to the cruelity and sin, at best for the Master Surgeon to work upon me, cutting and tearing what is diseased.
Tonight, through Alice and Chris' words, I understood that honesty could be gracious and affectionate, tender and nuanced, rather than honesty that is always blunt, cruel, blistering. Honesty that is can be more than simply the opposite of niceness or disimmulation. Honesty that could see reality, and yet not break your spirit. Honest that does not judge.
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! (Psalm 139:1)
God sees us honestly. We are transparent as glass before him.
So should it be with ourselves, and with each other. Looking inwards, looking outwards, looking upwards. Sometimes it feels easy. Mostly the looking at others bit. Sometimes it takes effort, and discipline, not to forget to look upwards. Looking at ourselves? That takes courage, that kind of seeing. Constant and conscious acts of everyday bravery.
For who of us can really bear that much honesty? Emily Dickinson once said that "the truth must dazzle gradually, else everyone be blind." One online commentator, obviously American, likened it to "not yanking up the blinds in the morning in a dark room or the outside sun is going to be blinding!"
Emily's advice then? To tell all the truth, but "tell it slant".
I think I can see what she's getting at. Speak honestly, but indirectly, with nuance and subtlety. In the rest of that poem she talks about "success in the circuit" -moving around the truth, spiraling to reveal, rather than blurting it all out. I'm not sure I entirely subscribe to that, being someone who appreciates directness, and finds subtle circumlocution somewhat patronising and occasionally false (I can see what you're doing, y'know, just tell it to me straight!) But I would definitely say: our words should be considered, carefully picked like choice fruit, and lovingly appropriate for the occasion and person.
Further on, Emily uses the illustration of children, who, initially frightened by lightening, become easy by having the phenomenon explained to them. So too us, in our "infirm", must have the splintering brightness of truth "eased", by its being told it kindly. Our tone (for what is content without form?), ought to be sweet. Our intention not to accuse, but to elucidate, letting, in Emily's words again, the truth's "superb surprise", come to us, dropping slow, and lightened by understanding. For there is joy in truth, just as the morning sun is a delight, as long as our eyes can adjust to the sudden light slowly.
And, I think, as imitators of Christ, we can go one better than Emily in why and how we tell the truth. God saw us, and he judged his Son instead. Unexplainable logic! impossible grace! We have freedom, but we live with the responsibility of mercy.
"Tell all the truth, and tell it in all grace." It doesn't scan as well on the page, but I think it'll work OK in life.
